My House Is Not an Infirmary, Damn It!
by psi-aura
Summary: Sakata Gintoki, underneath it all, is a compassionate man. How could he not be? He's seen far too many precious people near death to leave anyone else alone and injured. But even so, putting up with numerous cast members who in various events have gotten injured or ill can stretch the limits of even his tolerance.


**My House Is Not an Infirmary, Damn It!**

Patient 1: Shinpachi

Gintoki looked over at Shinpachi for the fourth time that hour as the teen dissolved into yet another fit of coughing. His subordinate had shown up late to work (such as it was at the Yorozuya), with a flushed face and a thick scarf wrapped around him even though it was midsummer. Now, being a somewhat observant man with a brain and a pair of eyes, the great medical expert Gin-san had immediately come to the conclusion that his protégé was sick. It was annoying, and of course he was sympathetic, but it hadn't been of major concern. Now though, it sounded like the teen was coughing his lungs up, and Gintoki couldn't help but feel a little worried.

"Oi, are you okay, Shinpachi?" He called out, hiding his concern with his normal apathy. "You sound like you're trying to imitate Jushiro Ukitake. Well, my boy, if you're going to cosplay you might want to put some effort into it. You're not even wearing a white wig!"

"Sorry, Gin-san," Shinpachi managed to say in between coughs, "It's nothing… I was just walking home in the rain last night, and I must have caught a bit of a fever…"

Gintoki snorted. "Then why'd you come in today? We don't have any jobs, staying at home would have been fine."

"It's okay!" Shinpachi assured him, the earnestness of his words slightly marred by the hacking from his chest. "I was fine this morning; I'll be okay once I rest a bit."

Gintoki raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, but did not respond. Kagura looked up from where she was stroking a napping Sadaharu. "Gin-chan, my mother used to say that when people were coughing, you should whack them on the back to dislodge whatever's stuck."

"No, I'm okay, Kagura-chan," Shinpachi protested.

Kagura ignored him, and stood. She advanced on her co-worker, oblivious to the fear in his eyes. "Mother knows best, Shinpachi. Take it like a man."

"N-No, it's fine, Kagura-chan," the glasses wearing teen tried to tell her, attempting to move away, but Kagura just jumped round to his other side, holding up her hand.

"That's enough, Kagura." Gintoki's voice immediately caught both children's attention.

"Gin-chan?"

Gintoki sighed. "Leave him be." He knew how this gag would go. In her eagerness to help Shinpachi get better, Kagura would hit him on the back, but forget about her freakish Yato strength and overdo it, probably leaving Shinpachi with a broken spine and a few ruptured organs. Usually, Gintoki would just go along with it, and watch the (probably hilarious) fallout, but today he could tell that the young Shimura was too weakened to receive a blow like that.

As Kagura huffed and moved back to her spot, Shinpachi shot Gintoki a look of pure gratitude. "Thank you for trying to help, Kagura-chan, but I really am perfectly fin-" Shinpachi was cut off by another round of coughing, this one even more brutal than the last. It sounded so much worse than before, and Gintoki felt his heart thud in his chest as he saw his friend cough up blood.

"Oi, Shinpachi-!" Abandoning all apathy, Gintoki leapt up and ran over to the boy's side, catching him as he fell to his knees. He looked around wildly at Kagura, who was frozen, staring at the sudden change in mood. "Go fetch some water, now!" Gintoki yelled at her, snapping her out of her trance. She nodded determinedly, and rushed off to the kitchen to fetch a glass.

Gintoki quickly but carefully picked Shinpachi up, laying him down on the couch. The teen curled up in a fetal position, still coughing. Gintoki ran his hand over his underling's back in an involuntary gesture to bring comfort, noting the shivers that were running down his spine.

"Idiot, walking home in the rain is only for heartbroken teens," he muttered. "It never brought any good."

He would know. Although, the heartbreak from when _he _was a teenager was of a very different sort to what most young people might go through…

Gintoki shook his head sharply. That line of thought would lead to nowhere useful; he had a sick person to take care of.

Kagura came running back with a glass brimming with water, slopping half of it over the side in her rush. Gintoki gestured for her to set it down on the table, and she did so before standing back and biting her lip, worry filling her large blue eyes.

"C'mon, Pattsuan," Gintoki murmured, still rubbing Shinpachi's back. "Ease up a bit."

Slowly, Shinpachi's coughing subsided, and he was left quivering.

"Can you sit up?" Gintoki asked gently. Shinpachi nodded, still trembling.

With one hand still on his back, Gintoki carefully helped Shinpachi into a sitting position. Then, he picked up the glass of water Kagura had set on the table and pressed it into Shinpachi's hand.

"Drink," he urged.

Shinpachi obediently raised the glass to his lips, sensibly taking small, cautious sips.

"Coughing up blood isn't normal, even for a fever," Gintoki noted, watching him. "Just how hard have you been pushing yourself, exactly?"

The young samurai in training shook his head vehemently. "Not at all!"

"So you didn't do anything even remotely tiring after going home in the rain?"

"No!" Shinpachi cried. He paused. "Well… I did do a couple experimental swings… and then there was that Otsu Imperial Guard meeting I had to ring up everyone to organise…"

"That so." Gintoki did not sound impressed.

Shinpachi coughed again, but this time it was more out of embarrassment than illness as he mumbled "And Anue cooked dinner…"

Gintoki leaned back. "That would explain it. So, after subjecting your already weakened body to black matter, you decided to make your way here, in the grips of sickness." Gintoki surmised. He snorted. "Idiot." He looked up at the young female standing nearby. "Kagura, go ask the baba if we can use her phone; ours is on the blink since I spilled some strawberry milk on it. Ring Otae- cooking aside, she has better facilities to take care of sick people than we do."

"Got it," Kagura responded. "What're you going to do, Gin-chan?"

"I'll stay here and look after Shinpachi. Make sure he doesn't cough up half his internal organs." Gintoki told her.

"That would make an awful mess…" Kagura mused, before running to the door and disappearing out of sight.

Gintoki watched her go, shaking his head. "That girl…" He returned his attention to the other underling "Keep drinking, Shinpachi. You probably dehydrated yourself with all that coughing." He stood. "We don't have the ingredients for me to make you a quick broth, but I think I might have some vitamin pills around here somewhere…"

"No, Gin-san, it's fine," Shinpachi wheezed. "Thank you so much for the concern, but I really am okay, I've just got a summer cold."

Gintoki reached over and felt his forehead. "And a burning temperature," he noted. He leant back, making a noise of impatience. "You are very obviously _not _okay, Shinpachi. Why did you have to push yourself to come today?"

Shinpachi finished the last of the water and sighed, leaning back. He was still flushed and his breathing was much heavier than normal, but at least he didn't sound like he was a veteran smoker.

Gintoki tutted, and turned away to find those nutrient pills, but a quiet voice stopped him in his tracks.

"I wanted to be like you."

Gintoki turned round again incredulously. Shinpachi wasn't looking at him, he was staring at the floor, but Gintoki knew it must have been him that had spoken because there was no one else in the room.

"Like me?" he repeated dubiously. "The last time I got sick, I was confined to bed like a weakling while that purple haired ninja tried to sneak in and join me. You're certainly handling it much better than me."

"No, I mean…" Shinpachi trailed off, waving his hands around. It looked like he was searching for the right words. "Every time something comes up, you just keep going on. I've seen you with half your bones broken and your organs ruptured, but you just go and throw yourself back into the fight like it was nothing!"

Gintoki was left staring at his young friend. Did what the kid was saying mean that all this was born out of some kind of twisted admiration or jealousy? "Well, that's kind of different," He said slowly, running a hand over the back of his head. "Those times, there was too much to lose to let any injuries from stopping me. I knew that however much it hurt, if I didn't do something, I'd end up losing you guys." He sighed, and lowered his head. "That would hurt so much more," he murmured. Then he looked up, wincing slightly as he remembered one of the incidents. "Besides, you've seen the _aftermath _of that- remember after we stormed the shogunate? I was bedridden for a week, and I couldn't move without groaning. Though you guys didn't exactly help- having two brats and an Inugami use you as a cushion really takes it out of you…"

"But you're always so _strong!"_ Shinpachi burst out. "Even though the injuries you get would outright _kill_ a _normal _person, you-and Kagura, for that matter- just treat them like they're nothing! While I, I get brought down by a simple _cold? _That's just cruel!"

Gintoki looked at Shinpachi. "You're stronger than you give yourself credit for. Never forget that you too have been through things the average person wouldn't have survived. How many people would live through a run in with _Takasugi?_ I don't think many could."

Shinpachi still looked desolate though. "But even then, you always send us away from the worst fights. Like during Benizakura- you told us to run while you, covered in injuries and tired out already from another fight, fought through hordes of Harusame to let us escape."

"Yes, but-"

"Or that time when we went after Jirochou: you were surrounded by elite mercenaries, and you hadn't fully recovered from your last fight with him, but you just told us to _trust you _and refused to let us cover your back!"

"Saigou's son needed rescuing," Gintoki protested, "And you'd already covered my back _fine _when we took on _the entire kabuki district _about five minutes earlier!"He sighed, and rubbed his temple. "I just didn't want you guys to get hurt. Sometimes, I can't help it- like this; there's no way I could have stopped you from getting this cold. Well, I guess I could have given you an umbrella, but hindsight is twenty out of twenty… But if I can keep you guys safe, I will try. I trust both you and Kagura with my life. My wallet is another story, but I know that if I'm ever in trouble, I can count on you guys to back me up."

"Then why don't you-"

"Because I have been through many things that would have killed a normal person." Gintoki said shortly, cutting Shinpachi off by quoting his own words back at him. "And I want to make sure that you don't. It's that simple." He looked round at the door. "You hear that, Kagura?"

The young Yato peeked round the doorframe guiltily. "Boss lady says she's coming," She said awkwardly, obviously embarrassed at being caught spying.

Gintoki nodded. "Excellent." Then his eyes became gentle, and he ruffled Shinpachi on the head as the boy had another- though blessedly lighter- fit of coughs. "You two are important to me. Why wouldn't I want to protect you?"

The two younger Yorozuya were left at a loss as to what to say after that. If this had been the heart of a battle, or one of the typical situations they got themselves into where passion flowed through their veins in place of blood, they might have been able to come up with a retort. But it was unusual for Gintoki to go into depth about his feelings- feelings that were usually impossible to fathom beneath those dead fish eyes of his.

But there was an answer. They knew there was, and when they looked into their hearts for it, they found it wasn't buried as deep as they thought it would be. It wasn't exactly a solution, it wasn't something that would resolve both Gintoki's protectiveness or their longing to truly know and understand the silver haired samurai, but it _was_ a response. A promise.

"You're important to us too, Gin-san."

"We want to protect you as well, Gin-chan."

He didn't respond with words, not immediately. He just smiled in a way that showed he understood exactly what it meant to them, and to him. However, for all the sincerity of his smile, there was a flash of deep sadness in his eyes.

"Instead of a load of trauma, I ended up making you guys carry a massive burden, huh?" he said, shaking his head. "I'm not an easy guy to protect." Even though he would like nothing more than to just erase that part of history forever, the world simply wouldn't let him. He may have forgotten Shiroyasha; the rest of the world had not, and they kept coming after him for the demon he used to be. No, no one with a past like his would ever be easy to protect. "Though…" Gintoki suddenly flashed a grin. "If anyone can do it, I've got the people who might just pull it off all around me, ne?"

The two children just smiled, and did not say anything. Words were not necessary, because in that one second, they completely understood one another.

Then Shinpachi doubled over and started coughing again, and Gintoki swore, remembering he was supposed to be locating the vitamin pills and rushing about as he tried to find them. Kagura was also in a bit of a frenzy, dashing back and forth from the kitchen with numerous glasses of water until the table in front of Shinpachi was covered in too many for him to _ever_ drink.

In the corner, Sadaharu just opened one eye from his nap, saw the state of chaos the room was in, and, with wisdom unusual for a dog, decided to close it again.

His owners were strange.

But then again, maybe that's why they fit together so well.

"**When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand."****  
**-Henri Nouwen**  
**

**A/N**

**Fluff, angst, and humour (hopefully)… I am on a roll here! Hm… maybe not fluff… I'm not good with fluff because it usually gets too deep and then goes into angst. Seriously, the first draft of this very chapter had about another half page of angsty drama. This is actually the first full chapter I've written in a while; the problem with me is that when I get an attack of the plot bunnies, I get a thousand at once and even if I focus on one, I have no idea how to write it as a full blown story without getting dull or repetitive. So I've decided to go for a more oneshot format where it's easier to resolve stuff instead of going on and on about them for chapters and chapters.**

**I love Gintama and the characters in it. Most of the time it's just pure anarchy as the characters get up to their usual antics, but sometimes you can really see just how deep the bonds between the people go, and how their pasts influence what they do and feel. Particularly Gintoki; I get the feeling that the reason he sends the others away from the major fights is that he doesn't want them to go through the things he did during the Joui war. **

**Anyway, this is the first chapter of a hopefully multi chapter fic in which poor Gin-chan will have to put up with various people being ill and taking advantage of his generosity. There may or may not be links between the chapters, but they will all focus on the character within them and their relationship with Gintoki. If you have a suggestion for a character, please do share them and the reasons why!**


End file.
